Introduction

Super Dead is a superhero-horror roleplaying game that takes place in a zombie-apocalypse world caused by the U.S. Navy's botched attempt to prevent World War 3. In this game, you will take the role of a mutant-powered survivor and attempt to make what you can out of the end of the world.

You will gather supplies, rescue survivors, and face off against villains, while staying one step ahead of the ever present zombie threat.

Super Dead is designed around tactical combat, cinematic action, and suspense-building horror gaming, inspired by the New School Revolution (See also: What is the NSR?) in tabletop gaming as well as modern tactical war games.

Everything you need to play can be found in this ruleset.

The rules to Super Dead are free under the license CC BY-SA 4.0

Quick Start: 28 Rules Later

If you're an experienced TTRPG player, or you have already read the rules, the following 28 rules might be enough for you to play an entire game or even a campaign of Super Dead.

Characters

  1. Characters are defined by super powers and four attributes: athleticism, intelligence, personality, courage.
  2. To make an attribute test roll 1d10 under the attribute.
  3. To use your powers, roll your power die pool (3d10), count the number of dice at or above the target number (6), and add your power rating.

Powers

  1. Powers can be used to create supernatural effects; all power uses must be consistent with the narrative.
  2. You can power surge to create particularly powerful effects, at the cost of stress.
  3. You can power soak to reduce your power effectiveness, instead of taking a wound.
  4. You can power student to use your powers in creative and impressive ways.

Combat

  1. Combat takes place in rounds of three phases: (1) movement, (2) hand-to-hand, and (3) shooting.
  2. During the movement phase, each character can move 30 feet normally, or 100 feet recklessly.
  3. If you move into another's line of sight, they can make a ranged opportunity attack against you.
  4. During the hand-to-hand phase, up to three exchanges of hand-to-hand combat can take place for all combatants in immediate range of one another.
  5. During the shooting phase, each combatant outside immediate range may shoot at one target.

Wounds

  1. You can be hurt twice, before being wounded, severely wounded, and then disfigured.
  2. Armor can prevent a number of wounds each round from some types of damage.
  3. Recovering from being hurt happens quickly, wounds happens slowly (28 hours for normal wounds, 28 days for severe wounds.)
  4. Disfigurement is permanent; if you are disfigured three times, you die.

Stress

  1. Life in the apocalypse is stressful. You will accumulate stress when you do hard things.
  2. If you accumulate a point of stress, you must succeed at a courage test or crack.
  3. While cracked, everything is hard, and any time you try to use your powers any dice below your stress level are subtracted from your successes.
  4. You can relieve stress by doing relaxing or enjoyable activities and making a successful personality test.

Zombies

  1. Zombies will move towards you as fast and directly as they can, then attempt to bite you.
  2. If you get bitten you will likely (8/10) turn undead.
  3. Turning may take (1/10) seconds, minutes (3/10), hours (3/10) or (1/10) days, depending on how the virus effects you.
  4. You can kill zombies by destroying their head, crushing them, or destroying their bodies with magic or the elements.
  5. Making noise attracts zombies and you are more likely to attract them at night.
  6. Encountering a horde of twenty of more zombies is stressful and dangerous.
  7. Though hordes may be defeated through combat, your best is to run away or use environmental features.
  8. Anyone who finds themselves in immediate range of a zombie horde is devoured.

Super Dead Design Principles

  1. Tactical Combat Combat in Super Dead is not a combat of attrition. For the most part, combats will be fast and fatal. Even as a super, one well placed bullet can take you from on top of the world, to scratching in the dirt. And that's just humans. Your best bet? Stay out of the fray, unless you know you can end it quickly. Use the environment and always engage on your own terms.

  2. Cinematic Action You're not some run of the mill schmuck: you're a super-powered mutant. You can do impressive things. And we don't want "the rules" to limit what you can do with your super strength, or your super speed, or your energy fields. Just know that everything you do will have a cost...

  3. Suspense and Horror Death lurks around every corner in the zombie apocalypse, no matter who you are. One bite from a zombie is likely to kill you. And while your powers can keep you safe for the most part, as you build up stress, they're less and less consistent.